Education Commons^™

“The Personal Has Become Political”: A Secondary Teacher’S Perceptions Of Her Body In The Classroom, Christine A. Mallozzi

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a secondary English teacher considered her body a personal and political matter within her professional settings. Discourse analysis of the participant’s narrative evidences that women teachers are pressured to present certain feminine and heterosexual bodies and present a similar personal life within their pedagogy. The risk in not following suit is being pushed out of the profession, a matter that can be problematic especially when a teacher undergoes personal changes counter to professional expectations. Teacher education responsibility in preparing teacher candidates for a variable professional trajectory is noted.